Ok, I don’t understand the whole “facebook blah blah blah HR, blah blah blah info on the web” argument. It’s called security settings, learn how to use a computer people. I have my settings cranked up as high as they’ll go. Basically only my friends can see anything on my profile at all. Their friends can’t see anything. So if I tag them in a photo, they can see it, and our mutual friends can see it, but their friends who aren’t my friends can’t see it. Same with posts, etc. You can’t even search for my profile on FB, it doesn’t show up. Same with google (and google cache). I prune my friends list about once a year (takes about five minutes) and keep it usually down around 60-70 people I actually talk to. It’s not rocket science.

I was just joking about the HR thing. Though it is an issue, as is the privacy you give up by being on those sites. But, that’s not at all why I don’t use them. They just annoy the piss out of me. I’ve managed to stay in touch with the people I like just fine without them.

Nope, not FB, no Myspace before, no Linkedin now. No twitter. No social networking footprint of any kind. Take that HR!

This urban legend that HR spends their time scouring the internet for profiles for potential and current employees is comical to me.

And not having a presence in the internet is not necessarily a good thing. If you claim to be an expert at something and there is nothing out there to back it up you probably aren’t. Linkedin is pretty much mandatory to be on from what I have been told.

Nope, not FB, no Myspace before, no Linkedin now. No twitter. No social networking footprint of any kind. Take that HR!

This urban legend that HR spends their time scouring the internet for profiles for potential and current employees is comical to me.

I’m not in HR, but I always have a staff member look for online profiles when we are considering making an offer to someone. We even tell good candidates during the interview to be sure there is nothing on their FB page that might be problematic.

In theory there’s no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

This urban legend that HR spends their time scouring the internet for profiles for potential and current employees is comical to me.

I actually mostly-believe this urban legend. As Higgmond suggested, I suspect that there is not a person in america that gets hired these days without at least one thorough google search of their name.

Blake McCallister wrote:

And not having a presence in the internet is not necessarily a good thing.

This I agree with. In fact, I’d take it a step further and say that not having a Facebook account is not necessarily a good thing.

When I’m trying to get the lowdown on someone and see that they have several hundred Facebook friends, I actually consider that to be a positive and reassuring sign. (ie. normal, likable person)

And consider that unless a user has decided to crank their Facebook security setting all the way to zero, some random potential employer can’t see anything beyond their name, chosen profile photo, education, etc anyway.

I can say with absolute certainty larger firms check your online profiles. This shouldn’t be that hard to believe. HR’s job is to research job applicants. Googling you is the first thing they do. And, since it’s not at all resource intensive, it would make a whole lot of sense smaller shops would do it too.

And, it’s entirely possible to have a presence on the internet without being on Facebook (et al). Sure, there are some networking benefits, but no one adds any professional credibility by posting a sweet status update. Get published on SeekingAlpha or something similar. Hell, start your own blog and build a track record of awesome ideas.

I do know of people that have been not hired, and current employees that have been reprimanded for things they post online. In fact, our PR department automatically searches all those sites for mentions of our company’s name.

A coworker in my division posted something to 4 square (not even sure what that is) that simply said “Urgh, work.” Not sure how it works, but his comment also automatically posted on Twitter and his iPhone automatically identified his currently location (maybe that’s a 4 square thing, whatever). End result was his tweet, which he didn’t actually manually send out, posted a simple “urgh, work” with his current location and our firm’s name. He received an email the same day from PR with his manager and HR cc’d firmly reminding him of our online policy regarding social networking sites.

All that said, Linkedin does provide some professional benefits. It’s an absolute must for financial advisors. Though I’m in sales and have gotten by just fine without it.

Before the market crashed in ‘08 and we let a whole bunch of people go, we actually had someone in our division that would set up and maintain your Linkedin profile for you if you didn’t want to do it yourself. So I (and my employer) agree it’s not without its merits.

tl;dr - It’s not a myth, your online footprint does matter. It can be beneficial for work, but not beneficial enough for me to bother with it. Stop posting stupid status updates. No one gives a shit.

Instead of asking for résumés, the New York venture-capital firm—which has invested in Twitter, Foursquare, Zynga and other technology companies—asked applicants to send links representing their “Web presence,” such as a Twitter account or Tumblr blog. Applicants also had to submit short videos demonstrating their interest in the position.

I like to find people that are in a job that I want and create a facebook and linkedin profile for them, then post a lot of rude, vulgar, or just job-searching activities (depending on the site). Try to see if I can free up the position.

I like to find people that are in a job that I want and create a facebook and linkedin profile for them, then post a lot of rude, vulgar, or just job-searching activities (depending on the site). Try to see if I can free up the position.

That could be a great new service to offer.

In theory there’s no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

Wifey often leaves her FB open and has a solid base of doable friends since she studied Marketing at UBC (a.k.a just be pretty and enjoy life), along with her Argentinian friends, so I visit her account to imagine how I would bang that bunch of happy chicks in their late 20s.

So basically I hope her hottest friends can’t track *her* obsessive browsing activity: “hey how are you! I saw you visited my last vacation’s album like 45 times during the last week …. uhmmm, thank you … I suppose?”